Historic Tianjin

While Tianjan, like Beijing, is primarily a new history, hints of its history are everywhere.

Beijing’s history is of a Chinese past, from the Ming City and Great Walls to Tea Town, but Tianjin looks to the world. Tianjin was a city that several concessionary areas to the European powers, and evidence of that is still clear. Some houses just scream “Europe”

There is a very similar building, in a very similar state, just a few blocks from my residence in Lincoln, Nebraska.

On the train (really, Tianjin’s metro) to the port and the Soviet ACC Kiev, the lives of farmers. Seeing men and women work the field with no automation was a shock, no matter how much I have seen on television of otherwise read.

Not everything historical is well kept. This building to the fight with the Eight Power Alliance during the Boxer Rebellion was clearly last cared for in the 1980s. Seriously, elsewhere there’s a series of pictures which stop in the mid 1980s.

Defense technology from different eras.

This fort once overlooked the ocean, but the deadly haze plus land reclamation means it’s far from the ocean and even the Ocean River is barely visible.